I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to scheduling techniques for wireless communication.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access systems include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) systems, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) systems.
A wireless communication system may include any number of base stations that can support communication for any number of user equipments (UEs). Each UE may communicate with one or more base stations via transmissions on the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the UEs, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UEs to the base stations.
The system may utilize a resource assignment scheme in which a UE may request for resources whenever the UE has data to send on the uplink. A base station may process each resource request from the UE and may send a grant of resources to the UE. The UE may then transmit data on the uplink using the granted resources. However, uplink resources are consumed to send requests for resources, and downlink resources are consumed to send grants of resources. There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to support resource assignment with as little overhead as possible in order to improve system capacity.